Can't rename files on an external harddrive,

I import my pictures into Lightroom using the following format YYYYMMDD - XXXX. For example, a picture with a file number 2113 taken on Dec 16th, 2011 would be ranamed 20111216 - 2113. I import them to my computer first and then move them to an external hard drive when the storage on my computer gets tight. For a while, I accidently was adding a space to the front of my file name, so it would import as " 20111216 - 2113" instead of "20111216 - 2113" notice the space at the beginning file name. This space was maintained when the file lived on my computer, but it was removed when I moved the lightroom folder to my external hard drive. As a result, all of the files that are on the external hard drive show up as "missing or deleted." Light room thinks there should be a space in the front, but none of the files on the hard drive do. I have to locate each and every file by hand, and the "find nearby photos" check box doesn't help, because all the files are missing the space. Is there a way to batch rename files in lightroom, even when the file is missing? I need to change all the names in my catalogue to take out the space at the front so I can then easily locate the files on my external hard drive. Can someone help me out? There has to be a better, faster, easier way to do this other than individually locating each and every file on my external hard drive.
Thanks for your help,
matt

Lightroom can't rename files while they're missing. If you batch rename the files on the external hard drive, to include the space again, LR should find them and then you can rename them within LR to remove the space again.

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Can't rename files on my external hard-drive.

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Whether it can fixed or not depends on how the drive is formatted. If it is FAT32 you may be out of luck, but if it is in a standard Mac format you should be able to fix it. Take a look at this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5908325
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Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to teh external.
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Hi there
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Can I copy files from an external NTFS formatted drive to my Mac?

My PC laptop died and I have two external NTFS formatted hard drives. I also have a desktop Mac.
I searched and came across another post dated Sept 2005 in the Support Forum that asked this similar quesiton I post. Sorry if i appear to sound repetitive but I really need confirmation to the answer for reason stated below.
The answer given then was as follows, "Max OSX can only read files on an NTFS formatted external hard drive -- it cannot write files to such a drive [OK, that is clear to me]. If you copy a file from an NTFS formatted hard drive to the internal hard drive of your Mac, there are absolutely no restrictions on what you can do to that copy of the file."
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Can't rename files on an external harddrive,

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